Jack had issues keeping up with time. For the most part, he was in his wyvern form, flying around hell, occasionally turning human and showering the demons in phosphorous flames. If it was back on Earth, he might have been reprimanded for breaking Geneva Convention, but at most, he would just get some scolding and get reminded that he was no longer an assassin, but an upstanding mercenary. In hell, he could use nuclear weapons with only issue being recovering his sweet sweet credits from the radioactive zone.
Regardless, he was currently being rather happy, even if it was really hard procuring and managing undead demons, even after purchasing the most microtransaction infused ability he currently had, maybe aside from
Minion Master
FREE*
You are a minion master.
*you still need to buy extensions, if you want it to be of use.
Requirements:
Summoning affinity
Minion Possession
500 SC
Allows to directly control creatures one created, can not control creatures summoned via rituals.
Requirements:
Minion Master
Minion Management
1'500 SC
Allows one to see the status and location of creatures, as long as they were created by oneself. Also works on creatures summoned by the means of rituals, including spirits and demons.
Requirements:
Minion Master, Summoning affinity 15+
Tamer
Summoning Affinity >10
Soul Affinity >10
5'000 SC
Allows to make contracts with creatures, sometimes known as 'Taming', that will force them to comply with the orders issued by the Tamer. Only creatures possessing souls can be contracted, and creatures with strong soul can be harder to tame, in which case it's necessary to weaken them first. There is no limit on the tamed creatures under one's command.
Requirements:
Minion Master, Summoning affinity 10+, Soul Affinity 10+
Total Cost: 7'000 SC
Unfortunately, this wasn't all that he spent on, as it was the most recent purchase. Between the first encounter with the Black Scorpions, which he later renamed to Scouts, and current moment, Jack had purchased ludicrous amount of ammo, grenades and explosives, due to the amount of demons he encountered, and two books, which looked to be rather cheap in comparison to the other purchases.
For one, his first book, 'Witchcraft', was rather odd. It didn't go through much explanation on the magical phenomena, and was just a cookbook with the list of ingredients and necessary techniques to perform some rituals and get started on the potion brewing, with limited information on how to perform group rituals and group spells. The last part was actually interesting, as summons could be used to increase the potency of spells, though the weaker summons would be 'spent', or drained out of their mana, which is their lifeblood, so one could say they would be sacrificed.
The second book, 'Summoner's lament', was on the pros and cons of various ways of becoming a summoner. For one, the 'true' summoner was just a battle mage that could summon a number of temporary minions during the battle, to aid himself or his allies in time of need. The other summoner type was so called 'Ritualist', who performed various rituals in acquiring aid from other planes of existence, using various reagents, and necromancers could actually be considered ritualists for the minion purposes. Of course there were 'Tamers', summoners who specialized in acquiring monster companions. They were similar to the ritualists, however their path was a long one, requiring to nurture their monsters. Jack thought that they also could be called 'trainers', and carry the monsters in tiny balls, but that would be way too ridiculous. Still, the book did provide him with a few guides on summoning elementals and demons, not that he was going to summon any at the moment.
The third book, 'Summoning for Noobs' was all about how a summoner didn't need anything but mana and dedication to one's craft, as long as they had access to 'primary' affinities, consisting of Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Darkness, Life and Death. It looked to be written by a person who actually despised the 'pseudo summoners', as the book was all about insulting every path but the one of 'true' summoner. This actually caused Jack to chuckle as he read through the rambling, containing information on types of summons available to the 'true' summoner.
Regardless, he was spending all of his points on the Summoning affinity, which was already at 24 points, with his Soul being at 20, which brought him two free spells.
Spells Acquired *2
Summoning spell:
Summon Sprite
Allows one to summon a temporary ally at your side. Sprites are lesser elementals which can be manifested in the material plane, but lack a way to be bound to it.
Soul Spell:
Soul Harvest
One may consume the lingering excess energy of a soul in order to gain some health and mana. This energy can also be stored in special [Soul Orbs] for latter consumption, but doing so will require mana proportionate to the amount of lingering energy.
Souls persist for six standard system hours on average.
However it cost him 485 points to level them up, and it was... acceptable. He would require 210 points to level up the other three 0 level affinities, each. If upping them up to level 10 wouldn't cost as much, just 55 points, then getting to level 20 in any affinity would set him back by 155 points. He however wasn't bothered by other affinities, as their progress could be supplemented by pills sold in Shop, which were actually rather cheap, all things considered, at least until level 30. From that point onwards, it would cost him more than a pack of phosphorous grenades per pill, about five times more per one. It wasn't exactly terrible, but he didn't see much value in them at the moment. Not to mention it might not work as advertised, he hated to admit it, but he was scammed a couple of times before.
“Currently have about twenty of Belly-mouth, six Scouts, one Jumper, because they are too good to pass up, and one... Drone, I guess?” Jack looked at his undead group, and shrugged. “Really, these demons are odd. Considering everything, they might be able to uncover the rest of the worm soon though.” Jack mused as he felt a sudden jolt coursing through his body. “Still have my undead... but...” Jack had a feeling he was in for a bad time. “Something is going to get wrong... oh... fuck.” Jack looked at the massive black bird flying straight towards him. “Welp... I'm fucked, aren't I?” he asked as the bird kept growing bigger and bigger, until eventually it blocked the sun as it passed.
Then nothing. The bird didn't bother looking at Jack, and just flown on it's way, leaving the panicking lizard unharmed, if somewhat distressed, and hyperventilating. He calmed down rather fast after the encounter however, reminding himself of it being 'just a simulation'.
“Just a simulation, right? Whoever made a bird is an asshole though, how am I supposed to beat THAT thing?! I'll need more than just a nuclear core to bring it down... huh... maybe if I get a proper nuke, which will cost tons of credits. No. Screw this shit, I'm out. I'll just go kill a few more worms instead, better deal with minibosses first. Speaking of bosses, why am I still level zero? I killed hundreds of the demons already, I am well overdue for a level up, don't you think?” Jack sighed, while looking dejected. “Whatever, I guess I should... why are my undead dying?” Jack looked at his minion tab and felt bewildered. His almost 20K health demons were completely annihilated by an unknown creature. “Guess birds don't like undead then... but we are more than 500 kilometers away. Another worm then? Or one of the dogs?” Jack sighed, and shook his head, as he decided to fly in the direction the bird came from. Flying to check on the undead might be a terrible idea.
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It didn't take long for Jack to happen upon another encounter, this time with a massive horde of Belly-mouth demons, which was the largest group he had ever seen. There were hundreds, if not thousands of them, trekking through the desert, and he was glad he wasn't on the ground. Even if Belly-mouth demons were quite weak comparing to other demons, and were rather susceptible to magic attacks, unlike the Insects, they still could pose a threat in large numbers. He hated Insect demons, as they had high physical and magical resistance, forcing him to use his incendiary grenades, but at the same time, they provided more resources than any other 'lower' demon. Jack decided to categorize demons by the amount of effort he had to put in to kill them, and by the amount of credits he could gain from their corpses.
Flying as close to the demons as possible, Jack started showering them in magical fires, with occasional phosphorous grenade thrown into a mix. He could have bought regular incendiary, napalm or even thermite grenades, but the phosphorous explosives were slightly more expensive than the other types, aside from thermite, and were a bit more damaging to the demons.
Unfortunately, his capability of dispatching demons with magic was low. It took him most of his mana to deal with just one Belly-mouth, and there were hundreds of them, not to mention that he couldn't actually harvest mana from their corpses while there were so much of them surrounding his target, hence the need for grenades. He would use bombs, but they weren't as cost effective as grenades.
Jack would occasionally dive in towards the demons, who didn't even mind the attacks from the above, and would harvest the demon's life force and convert it's corpse to credits, which dropped in cost by three times, before plunging more of the demons into the fire, be it magical or phosphorous, and repeat the capturing process. This was a long and tedious fight, but not exactly safe.
Sometimes, Jack would find some resistance from the demons, either after the abduction, or when demons tried to fight back, flunging their still burning brethren at Jack. One of their limbs, which was still on fire, managed to sear his hindleg, dealing minor damage to his health and causing quite a bit of pain due to the fire spread. Other times he would get his wings or legs damaged, occasionally getting a nasty hit on the maw, and one of the demons even managed to get a lucky hit on his eye, blinding him temporarily, until the demon got it's life sucked out to replenish Jack's own.
Once there were less than tenth of their numbers left, Jack noticed that a few of them were disappearing, accompanied by a brisk exposure to a red and purple light. He was constantly returning for the corpses left behind in his wake, so he thought he might have missed these occurrences before, but now that he saw them, he was getting curious. Jack dived down on one of the demons and cut it's unreasonably tough arm, before grunting and briefly making a circle in a thin air, from which a softly glowing figure emerged.
The figure itself seemed to be of about sixty centimeters tall, with no distinct features aside from it being made of white glowing material, constantly emitting smoke, which was reabsorbed by the creature. It didn't seem to have distinct appendages, giving it's figure an odd jagged egg-like shape, with only difference being a protrusion in it's upper body, which resembled a hexagon, but due to it's constant shifting, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact shape of it's protrusion.
As it was created, the Sprite glowed softly and entered the demon from the wound it sustained, with Jack dropping the demon on the ground near it's still living brethren. The sprite wouldn't persist for long, unfortunately, Jack noted that the longest the sprite could exist was about three hours, but if it was inside his body, the sprite would be able to survive for about twice as long, but Jack had no idea why that was as it was. No books of his had any observations regarding the sprites.
Jack noticed that another demon had been vanished, and sighed. He hoped that the demon he would 'mark' with his minion would be the next one to disappear. Unfortunately, it was the one in the middle of the formation, and soon another one was snatched by an unknown force.
These disappearences happened for the next two hours, and just as Jack was going to snatch another demon, the original demon and a sprite duo, vanished in a thin air, with his sprite revealing a small portion of the map on another entry.
“Third world, huh?” Jack asked and attempted to look through his sprite's vision, but couldn't. “Hey, that's rude.” Jack said as the sprite was on the verge of collapse already, judging from it's time bar, which had less than 20% left on it. Trying once again to possess the Sprite, Jack noted that he could actually control the sprite, but had no way of seeing through demon eyes. Or control the demon. But he could place a mark on the new portion of his map, and try to teleport there. Only he had wasted a lot of mana and was just above 70%, with the 'beacon' teleportation he had to spend 50% of his total mana. Shrugging, Jack decided to wait a bit, as the sprite started mapping the area outside of initial zone.
“Logically speaking, I encountered a hidden quest, or main quest, allowing me to leave this world and get to another. Then, whoever is on another side is the one behind demon abduction, either some sort of holy organization, or warlocks. Their strength is unknown, but judging that they can summon the low tier demons, then I guess they might be strong enough to kick my ass if I teleport to their destination. Then I need a way to evade their notice. And considering I have two tokens, I might get a cheat ability like invisibility... Need to look through that, I guess. But I will need to get the corpses processed first. I don't want to lose any of the corpses to some random summoner NPC.”
The process of turning the lingering energy of the demons, or their 'souls' was rather odd in his opinion. It was surprisingly easy to 'absorb' the lingering mana inside his own body, though when it came to making the orbs, it was slightly different. He had to use the spell he learned, only charge it with mana, so the mana inside the demon would be trapped inside his own mana, which will then create a thin bubble in which the trapped mana would remain in it's gaseous form.
The bubble itself was rather fragile, and required delicate handling, else it would burst open and flood the area in mana, which then would be partially absorbed by Jack, and some other mana conductive items. Of course, this would take quite a bit of Jack's mana to cast this spell, but at the same time, it would only cost about 1 of his mana per 10 mana from a single corpse, and there were still quite a bit of corpses lying around, in addition to a few dozens he already had in his inventory.
While harvesting corpses, Jack also looked through the possible ways of becoming invisible. The shop would provide him with anything it had, but Jack only knew of three ways of becoming invisible. The first one was the item, be it enchanted ring or technologically advanced concealment cloak, the second one being invisibility potion, and the third one being a spell. As such, Jack looked through the three different categories as he harvested demon souls and bodies.
After harvesting session, Jack was also getting near the end of his searching session as well. Just as he expected, there were three entries on the list. One would provide him with an item, similar to the prototype holographic cloak, which would cost a lot of energy to maintain the multitude of microcameras and screens to make him somewhat invisible. It was a costly entry, slightly cheaper than black market power core, but at the same time, he doubted it would be of much use.
The second entry was the invisibility salve, which would temporarily make everything 'organic' invisible. It would cost him slightly less than the cloak, if he were to use it everywhere he needed to, but he would have to apply it on his eyes as well, and it wasn't a good idea, according to Bernard, which would make him blind, due to the light passing through his eyes.
The third entry was an ability, as he expected. Only it would cost him the two tokens he acquired upon defeating the worm. Though it would provide him not only with invisibility, but a way to conceal his Status, or character sheet. Or to be precise, it would hide his mana signature, and then would use his own and surrounding mana to create a transparent 'cloak', which then would provide him with invisibility, for as long as he could supply mana.
Shrugging, Jack decided to go with the third option, as another permanent ability wouldn't hurt in the slightest. And he preferred being anonymous when interacting with other people. Lamenting the fact he was going to waste hard to acquire currency, Jack selected his entry and confirmed the purchase.
Shroud
1 ST
Your status is a very personal thing one should take great care of, but unfortunately, some people can be too nosy for their own good. With this, ability you will no longer need to kill the witnesses, as the only thing they would see, is whatever you wish for them to see.
You are also able to completely hide your presence from scrying attempts, and you no longer can be traced by expelled mana.
Subterfuge
1 ST
Still not anonymous enough? Then why not erase your presence from the world at large. Use your own mana to blend with the world and let it shield you from the prying eyes. By changing the amount of mana used, you might appear as a hazy image, or do not appear at all, so you will be able to meet new people without them judging your behavior, or looks.
Requires:
Shroud
Jack shrugged. It seemed that this time, the so called 'System' had a change in it's marketing team, but he didn't care. What he cared was how effective it was, which meant he had to summon yet another sprite to look through it's eyes, so he summoned the same sprite as before, and activated his new ability.
Looking through the eyes of a sprite, Jack noticed that his presence became somewhat blurry once he activated the shroud, which was odd. In his opinion, it was hard to control two bodies at once, and so he decided to switch his full attention to himself and increase the mana consumption on the
Stopping looking through the eyes of the sprite, Jack looked at his current mana, and sighed. He wasted more than half of it to summon sprite and to test out his new ability for less than a minute. He would need a lot of spheres to top him off during the exploration of the new place, and he doubted his twenty three spheres would last him for long.
Sighing, Jack looked at his other minions and shrugged. It seemed that the demons weren't exactly proficient at digging, but at least they did progress a bit, considering the ever so slowly increasing pit. Surprisingly, the sand behaved more like soil in this desert, and he didn't really bother with learning why so far. His best guess was the blood of countless demons, excrements and Sandworms, but it could as well be the evil alien overlord from outer space.
Sighing once again at the oddities of this simulation, Jack started meditating to recover his mana at a faster rate, before figuring out that it was best to change back into a human form. His wyvern form was already becoming a bit of a second nature to him, but his armor would provide more protection than flimsy flesh of a wyvern, even if it was the more common Yggdrasil reconnaissance armor, with much less durability and protective capabilities than his H-54. Still, it was good enough for his current situation, and with it's additional protection, he could probably survive whatever the other world would thrown at him. Unless it was the giant bird or Sandworm, chances are he would have to start from the very beginning.